In this seasonal offering, Isla Macleod invites us into the quiet threshold of the Autumn Equinox, a time of harvest, balance and the gradual burrowing of light into darkness. We explore the tender territory where gratitude meets grief, remembering that our capacity to mourn is woven through our capacity to love.

A time also known as Mabon, a name borrowed from Mabon ap Modron, the mysterious divine son of the Great Mother, from the ancient Welsh tales of the Mabinogion. His story leads us into a world where human knowledge has been lost and the ancient animals show the path to remembrance. It is the salmon, the oldest of them all, who ultimately knows where Mabon is held. The more-than-human world is keeper of memory, guide and ally in the work of returning what has been lost.

Each of this series with Isla offers the sensory richness of the season: apples pressed by many hands, hedgerow berries gathered from branch and soil, the first fire kindled in the hearth and the familiar signs that autumn has been arriving. Through gathering, tending, preserving and making, we are invited to remember our embodied belonging to the earth and the ancestral ways of being that still live within our senses.

We contemplate the impermanence at the heart of this season, and the tenderness that arises when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of what is passing. Alongside the tangible harvest, Isla speaks of the “dark harvest”: all that is quietly taking shape beneath the surface, often invisible to us for months or years. The seeds of becoming that are carried through endings, grief, uncertainty and the fertile darkness.

We offer practices for marking this threshold, with invitations to reflect on what has reached fullness, what you are grateful for, what you are grieving, what is ready to be released and what might be quietly growing in the dark.

A seasonal pause for gathering, giving thanks, grieving, releasing and remembering that we are held within a much wider web of life.

May the seeds of your becoming find their way into the fertile darkness.

Woven with music from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, Cynefin, the druid Chris Park and Yoav Yo of Soundspacing. Episode image from ℤ𝕤𝕦𝕫𝕤𝕒 ℤ𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕠 from a recent ceremony of ours.

Learn more about our work at rootedhealing.org

Receive two free workshops in embodied deep ecology (via Substack)

Isla’s Rose Heart Elixir

As the first harvest begins to ripen and the long days of summer slowly soften towards autumn, we arrive at Lughnasadh (Lammas), which is an ancient festival of gratitude, generosity and becoming.

In this seasonal audio journey, ceremonialist and author Isla Macleod invites us to pause at this threshold and take stock of both the visible and invisible harvests of our lives, exploring the wisdom of the first fruits, the mythology of Lugh, the traditions of Lammas across Britain and Ireland, and what it means to recognise abundance as something that lives through relationship.

Through storytelling, folklore and gentle seasonal practices, Isla reflects on the generosity of hedgerows heavy with berries, sunflowers planted for strangers, and the quiet ways the living world continually teaches us the innate art of reciprocity. She offers simple rituals to help you honour this turning of the year, from baking bread and gathering herbs, to creating a harvest inventory, making offerings, crafting with your hands and celebrating the gifts that have ripened within you.

Recorded during an extraordinary summer of drought, heatwaves, wildfires and sudden storms, this offering also invites us to consider what it means to live seasonally in a rapidly changing world. How do we remain rooted in gratitude without turning away from ecological grief? How do we continue to participate in the ancient rhythms of the Earth as those rhythms themselves evolve before our eyes?

Whether you are walking through fields of ripening grain, tending a garden, climbing a sacred hill, or simply longing to feel more deeply connected to the season you find yourself in, may this episode offer a moment to slow down, notice your own harvest, and remember that the greatest abundance is always that which is shared.

May your harvest be blessed.

With special thanks to the music in this episode, from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees and Cynefin.

Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org

Support us on Patreon.

In this seasonal immersion with Isla Macleod, we arrive at the luminous threshold of Summer Solstice, a time of abundance, celebration and ripening. Together, we explore Litha as a living invitation into collaboration, creativity and deeper intimacy with the web of relationships that sustain us.

These special seasonal episodes move between reflection, story, myth and gentle ritual invitation.

At the heart of this episode is a remembering that creation is through collaboration. As Isla shares, “Summer teaches me that creativity is a living current that I can choose to attune to.” Nature reveals that abundance is born through relationship, through the exchange of gifts, ideas, energy and care.

Summer becomes an invitation to soften our edges and allow ourselves to be surprised by Life. To become receptive to beauty, wonder and serendipity. To trust the mysterious intelligence moving through all living things and discover our place within the great dance of co-creation.

“To collaborate with life requires a willingness to be surprised and say yes to invitations that were not part of the plan.”

This is, as with our core intention at Rooted Healing, an invitation into intimacy with Life itself. Into what Isla describes so beautifully as participating wholeheartedly in the dance of Creation.

“May you taste the sweetness of this season and recognise the countless relationships that sustain your life.”

With special thanks to the music in this episode from Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, The Children’s Forest, Dorrie Joy and Cynefin.

Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org

Support us on Patreon.